Tennis Drills?

[DbacksAllTheWay]

I am a big basketball and baseball fan and I play also, but I would say my best playing sport is tennis. Last year, I was a sophomore in high school and I started off slow, but won my last six matches on the varsity team at #4, and we got 9th in the state of AZ. Well, we also played in the individual tournament and my older brother (who was a Junior) and I played doubles together. 64 teams from our division played (5A-II) and in the first round we knocked off our opponent rather easily (6-0, 6-0), then in the second round we played a team that seemed to be much better than us, but we climbed back from hole after hole to prevail and win (2-6, 6-3, 7-5). Then, in the next round we played a team that knocked off the Number 7 seed, it was a team that we seemed to be evenly matched with, but we ended up barely losing because of inconsistent serves and a few errors here and there (5-7, 4-6), this team ended up losing to the team that won state by the same score we lost to them. My brother and I now believe with a lot of hard work over about a year, we can come back next year and legitimately challenge for the state title, and hopefully take it. Does anyone know any workouts good especially for helping out tennis skills? Thanks for the time and reading such a long story, my brother and I will most likely be the number's 1 and 2 on varsity next year.

[stevethumb]

send a PM to JTWood..he will be honored

[Omaha Red Sox]

Congrats on a quality season DATW! Good luck with the upcoming season and keep us posted. High school sports are great. I don't know anything about tennis workouts, though I do enjoy a game now and then.

[Art Vandelay]

The depressing thing about tennis is that no matter how much you play, you'll never be as good as a wall. I played a wall once, they're relentless.

[Omaha Red Sox]

The depressing thing about tennis is that no matter how much you play, you'll never be as good as a wall. I played a wall once, they're relentless.

[AcidRock23]

I found the wall is actually bad b/c you use backspin against the well to get it to kick down hard and come back to you which is the opposite of actual tennis, where topspin is a big advantage.

I am not sure about workouts but stuff like serving you are best to just keep practicing as much as possible. It might be a good idea to try to play against the guys who beat you in these tournaments? The better the competition the better you will get. My serve got a TON better when I simply started launching the ball up a bit higher on my toss. Just try throwing it up higher than you do and see if you can hit it harder.

[Half Massed]

I was co-captain of my varsity team this past year, and I'm glad to see more tennis players. As for drills, it depends if you're alone or with other people and what your strengths are. I'm a quick player, so I like to practice serve and volley drills if I'm with another person. You can make up your own drills to suit you though. If you're having trouble with serve consistancy, serve a bucket of balls, and then play points. Playing points is important after serving a bunch because it works with your timing and "game situation" pressure after you've gotten your serve working well.

If you mean physical workouts that will help for tennis muscles, I'm not so sure about. I know throwing a football around uses similar arm motions as the serve, so you can play around with that.

[acsguitar]

When I was 12 I won a camp tennis tourney over all the 14 year olds, I was supposed to be 14.

I cursed though in celebration and was stripped of my title

[Laean]

wow that brings back some fond memories.

we won our league 2 years in a row when i was a junior and a senior, and that senior year we made it to the 3rd round of CIF. guess that isn't a big accomplishment, but my school wasn't one of those rich ones with kids that practiced in country clubs and got private lessons and etc. we didn't even have any ranked players, but everyone on the team was pretty solid, so we'd usually lose the #1 and #2 singles, but win the #3 singles matches and most/all of our #1 #2 #3 doubles matches.

kind of like a fantasy baseball lineup with no pujols or vlads, and all burrells instead, but then again we didn't have any sheltons or craig wilsons either.

anyway, i don't have any tips or anything since i'm sure you already know anything i might say. i just wanted to wish you good luck with tennis, and also to tell you to not get too caught up in the competition of things, but to enjoy it, it'll be one of the best times of your life. the best memories i have aren't the victories or winning the league championships, but the stuff that happened in practice, the bus rides in away matches, the team dinners, etc.

[AcidRock23]

I was thinking about this some more and I recall our Women's coach, who would teach the tennis unit that we all signed up for in PE class, would have us jump straight up and lift our knees up as we jumped repeatedly to build leg strength and also in lieu of sit ups as it apparently worked your abs. Every now and then I'll do it but it usually raises quite a ruckus around the house.